


The Howling

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1991-01-01
Updated: 1991-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:04:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blake as werewolf, under a Freudian moon</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Howling

**Author's Note:**

> Printed in the zine 'Southern Comfort 6.5', editor Ann Wortham, 1991

##  
##

Avon snarled to himself. Of all the wretched planets to get stranded on. Pelting rain. Huge, gloomy trees whose labyrinthine roots tripped one at every third step. Smell of humus and wet wood. A pathetic sun, dwarfed by the perfect dove-grey globe of the moon, which gleamed even through cloud or leaves.

And where was Blake? He snarled again. Of all the wretched people to get stranded with... However, the bravado of anger was more difficult to sustain on that subject. His snarl paled into a morbid quirk, as he contemplated their cave. Living in a hole was musty, dirty and undignified. Yet it might not be so terribly bad, if the woodfire weren't the only crackling hot one of the three. Yesterday evening, after Liberator fled orbit, Blake had explored for 'temporary quarters', and in genial spirits had dragged Avon hither. “Bit cramped, but I won't mind sleeping in your lap if you won't mind sleeping in mine.”

The technician had rarely heard an idea he liked more. Unfortunately, Blake uttered this with astounding obliviousness. While his innocent kindled twigs, Avon had dreamt of kindling other blazes in those burly limbs. Blake's political passions were so fierce, what might not his earthier passions be? Futile to wonder. As distraction from the dismal prospect of a celibate sojourn three metres from a desirable terrorist, Avon had snapped. So severely that Blake had glowered and gone to mope about the forest for most of the night, leaving Avon alone with that small, sour grief he called his lust.

Nor had Blake's joviality returned with the sun. In fact, the rebel had been peculiar this morning – not hostile so much as ruffled, remote. He acted deaf and dumb, but once met Avon's eyes with a bewildered, somehow entreating look that had nagged the technician ever since. Now the afternoon was dead, a fog was brewing – and Avon heard the heavy tread of boots.

“The hunter home from the hill,” greeted Avon easily, seeing a scrawny animal swinging from Blake's fist. “How did you catch that?”

Rain splashed unheeded over Blake's jutting eyebrows. His flattened curls hung long, like a barbarian's, and matt black. “Cunning,” he said, and crouched. One sturdy thumb pierced where the animal's skin was tender, and slit quickly down the belly. “No knife,” he answered Avon's fastidious grimace, and smiled. “Hungry?”

“I was.”

Blood welled about Blake's buried hand. Plucking a liver from the mess, he sniffed the organ curiously, then drew his lips carefully back from his teeth.

“Blake,” interrupted Avon, though striving to sound blase. “You might roast the thing.” Undisguised flesh was carrying the simple life a bit too far – but Blake was ever the enthusiast.

“Of course,” said Blake, as if he'd forgotten himself, and tossed the liver into the hot ashes. After a moment he licked his fingers, slowly.

Supper was not a scintillating affair. Blake's affable conversibility failed him – he spoke in monosyllables, and those sublingual ones. Except once he said, “I wish we had a bottle of whiskey,” which was unusual. Not unusual for Blake to drink, Avon specified, but to confess a desire to do so. Grasping a bone, the rebel clamped his jaws about the cooked meat, only to abandon it in puzzled dissatisfaction. Avon's appetite was still in retreat. He stared morosely into the flames, meditating on how to endure another night of Blakean neglect of his many charms. Meanwhile, Blake prowled the circuit of the cave like a caged thing, eyes on the glory of the tarnished silver moon.

In the gloaming, fog crept between the trees, clammy and yellowish. Blake stopped and said with a strange, laughing gusto, as if high, “I like dusk.”

Simultaneously, a noise trumpeted from the forest. A single jubilant clangour of a howl. Avon scrambled to his feet, swearing, “By the gonads of Travis, what was that?”

“What was what, Avon?” Blake swung around casually enough. When he saw the technician, however, a change quivered over him – a kind of stifled hush. Is my fly undone? wondered Avon, rather hoping so.

“I think you ought not roam the woods any more, Blake,” he said. “You didn't make the acquaintance of anything malevolent last night?”

“No,” murmured Blake, as if from a fog like the one beyond the cave. “I just enjoyed the moonlight.”

“Somehow I don't. I never saw such an eerie satellite. If you'll overlook the unscientific terminology.”

Blake overlooked his entire remark, but compensated his ego for not listening by the prodigious weight of his gaze. Possibly, thought Avon with a giddy leap of hope, the evening may not be so tedious after all. Still, he was uneasy. Unless the firelight were playing tricks, Blake's skin had gone sallow, green rings darkening under his eyes. That rose-coloured mouth Avon admired was now an unwholesome red, and parched. Avon cursed himself – no wonder his rebel was behaving oddly.

“Blake, you've a fever.” Anxious, he hastened over to clamp his fingers about Blake's wrist. The flesh was searing, the pulse wild. “You've an Orisan whale of a fever.”

“I know,” rasped Blake. He surveyed Avon with new relish, actually licking his lips in furtive hunger. Yet his eyes were hagridden – Avon looked there and saw a witches' carnival troubling their once pure brown. “Help me.”

Could lust do this to a person? Avon believed it – lust had done equivalently weird things to him. Mutated him into a revolutionary. Whatever Blake's tightly-leashed desire – whose existence, like that of the Twelve-Tusked Trooper Ravisher of Udopho Three, Avon had always had faith in – was mutating him into, Avon wasn't tardy in proffering help. He seized Blake's collar, pulled him down an inch or two and kissed him, thinking – take no prisoners.

Initially, Blake seemed dumbfounded. Then came a hearty rumble of laughter. Avon's ribs were left crooked from a hug, as Blake told him huskily, “I'll swallow you whole. I'll gobble you up.” His eyes glazed over – finally, instinct had routed thought.

The rebel could swallow any portion of him he wished, thought Avon bemusedly. If this were a frustration-induced hallucination, then long live delusions. Teeth champed playfully in his neck – those hard, uneven teeth, a year-old ambition. Blake's throat thrummed with a perpetual soft growl.

“I suspected,” said Avon, lazing under his caresses, “an animal beneath the idealist.”

Blake threatened fondly, “I'll eat you to death.”

“Oh, fine.”

Argent glimmerings from the moon struck them. A throe passed through Blake's hefty frame. He was beautiful by moonlight, Avon saw. Even the hollow, famished eyes, the haggard face, smote him with a strange joy. I like him too much, thought the technician – but forgot to worry, for Blake drove him to the cave floor and pounced upon him.

Fingers knotting in shaggy locks, he permitted the rebel to rip away their shirts. Never mind, he hadn't liked that one anyway. Blake mauled his naked shoulders, while Avon attacked their trousers with feet and hands – he didn't think he was stopping there, did he? They tumbled perilously near to the smoking logs, but Blake noticed nothing further than the chest he was marauding. His nips were getting slightly too acute – obviously denied passion had frenzied the poor fellow. Avon didn't mind his ferocious energy. The honey-sweet end would calm Blake. Meanwhile, those guttural whimpers were piquant, if singular. Rabid hands fondled Avon, endearments were yowled in his ear. Next Blake began to snap his jaws with a savage click, his doughty embrace degenerating into the berserk.

Avon thought, he's a lunatic. This isn't raw sex. The man has a serious erotomanic condition. “Er, Blake?” he panted over the noise of slavering. “Blake, my harebrain?” No decipherable answer. He might have foretold that having his wicked way with this one would involve more trouble than a tribble in the time distort. Securing the rebel's chin, he reasoned, “Now, my Blake, you're the excitable kind, but we can effectuate our objective in a civilized manner --”

True, neither of them had shaved for eighteen hours. Yet Avon's cheeks were lightly peppered. Whereas the chin he was prying away from his throat seemed to be overgrown with rough thatch. Clamming up, Avon kept extraordinarily still. Until a beast's quiet snarl rose from the thing in his arms. Slowly, Avon's stare fell – to a calf gone thin and hirsute, a knee joint extruding the wrong way.

For once in his motley career, Avon indulged in a piercing yell of panic. He found the activity most helpful. Whilst shrieking, he flung the ex-Blake chin over heels away from him. Rolling to the left, he grabbed his gun, and waved the shaft at his over-amorous shipmate. “Now, Blake, be sensible,” he said.

Squatting where he was thrown, Blake whined in an injured tone. He appeared too obsessed with Avon's delicacies to remark the muzzle he was growing. The rich fur swathing his nakedness was dark, brindled with hazel. Where most profuse, about his ears and belly, it went familiarly wavy. “For a rebel, you make a winsome wolf,” Avon told him. “But I suppose it would be hazardous to stroke your curls.”

Blake's renovated jaws yawned, ruby-red and hot enough, Avon fancied, to sizzle his stubble.

“I see. Does this kind of problem often arise when you get excited?” The damnable thing being, Avon was still rumpled and sweaty and nude and lascivious. While those striking Blake-eyes – clever enough to cringe from the gun – were wanton with a less opportune yearning. Plumping down onto his forepaws, the wolf thrust his handsome snout in the general direction of Avon's crotch and howled piteously. Don't be seduced, Avon told himself – he means to snatch it off with those giant, lustrous, spellbinding teeth of his, and gulp it as an entree to the remainder of me. He'll nose about in my ribs for main course. Guzzle brains for desert. “Blake,” he said patiently. “I will not agree to your eating me to death. I failed to realise you spoke literally. I suggest you reconcile yourself to the disappointment, and revert to your proper species.”

Blake rarely was amenable to reason. As a wolf, his worse qualities seemed to have mastery. He bayed belligerently to the sky, muscular throat exposed, deafening Avon with his horrible music. Fanaticism burned in his green-and-cinnamon eyes.

Obviously he's caught in a moon-glamour, Avon thought. We'll see whether dawn won't fix him. Until then, the situation looked like a stand-off. Only seven hours. Avon hung grimly onto his gun, quite determined not to expire in Blake's greedy embraces.

#

The tyranny of the moon ended. Avon's exhaustion-fogged brain registered a mellow, kinder light chasing rattly leaves into the cave. Gratitude nearly undid his atheism. His extremities were mottled blue – the campfire had given up the ghost, and being on heat was of marginal function. The vigil hadn't bored Blake the wolf. One-track-minded as ever, he had skulked around the verges of this rustic bridal chamber, watching for that consummation of fate when Avon's resistance would yield and he could leap to his right of gourmandising ecstasy. Dreaming of this, his eyes transmitted tender reproach.

As for Avon, he would have settled for bestiality, had there been any chance of surviving to enjoy a second round.

When the sun crept over his tousled ruff, Blake whined and shrank away. His sinewy, famine-lean body contorted, legs thickened, chest flattened, claws receded. Soon Blake sprawled, dazedly, in his naked human glory. This time, Avon licked his chops.

Seeing Blake shake his groggy head, the technician seized the opportunity to hastily thrust on his clothes – lest Fearless Leader discover his unrequited salaciousness.

Rolling over, Blake complained, “Avon, I feel awfully queer.”

“Well, that's mutual,” Avon muttered gloomily.

The rebel noticed his indecorous, yet highly decorative, dishabille. “What am I –?”

“Excellent question.” Holstering his gun for the first time in seven hours, Avon thought quickly. “Have you forgotten, Blake, your inebriation on the emergency medical soma?”

“Uh,” the confused guerrilla replied. “Yes, I have. Was I drunk?”

“Extremely. Alcohol, I learn, changes your personality radically.”

“I see,” Blake lied. Shamefaced, he poked about for his trousers and, to his shipmate's regret, hid his most charismatic features. “Did I, um.” With a brave effort, Blake vented his suspicions. “Did I make any – unusual – overtures to you last night?”

“Well, you did offer to eat me,” Avon answered easily.

Struck with horror, Blake went charmingly crimson. “I see, Avon, I didn't – I mean I never – I was plastered,” he rambled lamely.

“You were, to be specific, on all fours.”

“And you, ah – put me in my place, then?”

“I sincerely endeavoured to put you in your place,” Avon leered.

For a passing moment, Blake was neither embarrassed nor befuddled. “I remember you rejected me,” he growled, soft and raw, his eyes imprisoning Avon's.

Tremours reawakened in the technician under that compelling look of animal knowledge. He swore, whatever he is, damned if I won't have him yet –

Blake shied aside, then, and escaped their cave. Avon stalked his prey.

After yesterday's rain, the forest smelt crisp, transformed with new, vivid green. The rebel seemed still only three-quarters human – on his sallow countenance, bushy eyebrows were crawling to a rendezvous. With a sleepwalker's automative whimsy, he picked a cluster of lilacs in his cannibalistic nails. He thrust them towards Avon.

Flowers from a towering, jaundiced, red-toothed, sentimental wolfman. Avon said, “Thank you, Blake, I'll treasure them.”

“Why are you going armed? Records show no aggressive wildlife here.”

“Well now,” said Avon fondly. “I find aggressive wildlife can pop up in the most unexpected places. I heard howling last night.”

“Howling?” he muttered uneasily, as if striving to remember a dream.

Avon came to a decision. “Blake, why don't you sit down?” Tamely, he did, and Avon joined him on the mossy log. “Blake,” he began gravely. “I have disturbing news for you. You're a werewolf.”

“A w- were-- a what?"

“A werewolf, Blake, I'm afraid. Had no-one commented on the fact before?”

“Never.” Olive-bruised eyes wide, he accused, “Is this one of your peculiar jokes, Avon?”

Taking Blake's hand, Avon gently revealed the brutish bristles spiking his palm. “As I said, you had ambitions to dine upon me.”

“Oh. I thought you meant...” Awkward, he fidgeted.

Avon smiled ironically. “Nothing so terrible, Blake, a mere case of shapeshifting. Now, let us approach this scientifically. If I recall my lycanthrope lore --” Cocking his head, he considered. “The night before last, you spent skulking in the woods.”

“Staring at the moon,” Blake murmured.

“Exactly. You ought to know better than to ramble under strange celestial bodies.”

Grimly, Blake ordered him, “If I try anything on again, Avon, you'll have to shoot me.”

“I won't be murdering you, Blake, don't get melodramatic. What's called for on this planet is a modicum of logical reasoning. If your condition isn't chronic, it must have been locally induced.” Avon asked shrewdly, “What were you thinking of in the moonlight, Blake?”

The stained teeth chewed on his bottom lip. “You,” was the grudging reply.

“I am testing a theory. To aid us both, I need to know details. Answer the question.”

An unruly glance. “Just your damnable self, like always.”

“How about if I guess, and you tell me whether I'm right?”

Blake nodded unhappily.

“Were, perchance, your meditations of a... carnal nature?”

The rebel puffed out his breath. “Gods, am I that blatant?”

“Last night, Blake, you were blatant. Sublimation of sexual hunger,” he diagnosed in triumph. “Don't you see? That wretched moon operates on Freudian principles.”

Blake only wailed, “What's wrong with me, Avon?”

“You're suffering a displacement syndrome, brought on by the properties of that moon. But the original problem is in you. It was only me you desired to devour – you didn't get discouraged and go off hunting alternate game.”

“But what has primitive psychoanalysis to do with it?”

“I know how to fight the problem now,” Avon insisted excitedly. “I can cure you, but you must trust me.”

“Trust you –?”

“No need to go on the rampage for raw flesh anymore. That was a substituted appetite. If I slake the true need...”

Their eyes met and riveted there.

“You understand me, Blake,” he urged huskily.

“Are you sure this theory of yours holds water? It sounds a little – improvised.”

“Worth a go, isn't it? The medicine I have in mind can't be that hard to swallow.”

“That was a very bad pun, Kerr Avon, under the circumstances.” Blake surveyed him as though he'd just uncovered evidence that the Milky Way was hexagonal instead of spiral. “And you're willing to facilitate this desperate remedy?” he mused tenderly.

“Oh, I think of it as a great personal sacrifice for the cause.” Avon's grin was as radiant as a gibbous moon.

The lycanthropic guerrilla tackled him on the log. Giving in graciously, Avon found himself weighed down in rich, damp peat.

If Freud was wrong, Avon reflected from their inelegant flurry of limbs, I won't live to tell the weird tale on Liberator. Neither will he, with his guilt trips. As blood-swollen flesh united and seared, his last lucid thought was, but going this way beats the hell out of Federation blasters.

###  
###


End file.
